Studies in Historical Documents from Nepal and India by Cubelic, Simon; Michaels, Axel; Zotter, Astrid

The National Archives of Nepal, established in 1967, is the government body authorized to manage and preserve the country’s archival documents. It operates according to the Archives Preservation Act of 1989, and its functions as a repository of government records are to collect and preserve manuscripts and other significant documents and to facilitate public access to them. It collaborates with both national and international organizations in pursuit of its goals, and has thereby created a network of partnerships. collaborations with Germany. It has successfully partnered with the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project founded in 1970 and its successor Nepalese-German Manuscript Cataloguing Project. Recently, in February 2016, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the research unit Documents on the History of Religion and Law of Premodern Nepal of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Germany. One of the articles of the MoU states that the research unit and the Archives will issue joint publications. Consequently, we are glad to announce the beginning of a joint publication series titled Documenta Nepalica. The current volume, the first of the series, is the outcome of a conference held in Heidelberg in October 2015.